Crucket

What was Vettori doing in the long room while the boys were dealing to the Aussies:

Vettori hails most realistic video game ever

JRod sees the positives in John Howard’s nomination:

John Howard for President

That will teach you to push your arch-conservative former prime minister over our highly respected retired cricket administrator.

The Knife:

I guess it will be fixed eventually, but the first headline I read about John Howard being Cricket Australia and New Zealand Cricket’s nominee for ICC president was “Howard gets the not for ICC role“, on the New Zealand Cricket website.

The “not” for “nod” is only a typo of course, but I would like to believe it represents some kind of subconscious unwillingness by New Zealand Cricket to accept that they are colluding with Australia to subject the cricket world to John Howard.

I also took some childish delight in selectively reading extra, unintended meaning in the press release, such as how “Australia and New Zealand considered a number of distinguished candidates of global stature” but decided to go with Howard rather than a distinguished candidate.

Peter Roebuck has made the case expertly, but John Howard is quite clearly a poor selection as ICC president, a joke almost. He knows little about cricket, his only contribution being to dissuade Murali to tour. And there was an eminently qualified alternative in New Zealand’s suggestion John Anderson. Furthermore, he is a divisive figure and is not going to be liked in the subcontinent.

Personally I despise Howard for being a nasty little racist, war-mongering conservative. His objections over the apology to the Stolen Generation is particularly offensive. So I am naturally unhappy to have him heading world cricket. I must admit though that I don’t expect him as ICC president to turn any boat people back to the sea or drag cricket into any illegal wars. Peter Roebuck is also trying to be philosophical about the selection, suggesting that Cricket Australia nominated Howard because the ICC needs a strong, uncompromising, bull-headed leader to give it some clout, for Australia’s benefit.

When you’ve tanked the bowlers around the park on your way to an unbeaten 20-20 century, getting the finger from one of those bowlers is the highest form of flattery. Tait is presenting to McCullum here in a frustrated acknowledgement that McCullum was fricken’ awesome the other night.

In contrast, despite what others might think, the Lancaster Park crowd was jeering Shane Watson because he is a dick, not because we respect his abilities with bat and ball. We openly hate him, we don’t secretly rate him.

Best 20-20 ever. First time an over-200 run total has been nearly chased down. It was the 20-20 equivalent of the 872-run Johannesburg ODI, except not as long and tedious.

Can’t get better than a scintillating century, an exciting run chase, tied scores and then to top it all, we get to see the Aussies choke.

And it was an NZ win wasn’t it? Cricinfo are listing it as a tie, but I’m assuming that is just that their automated scoreboarding systems are set up to handle super overs.

But then, half a day later, we get the worst 20-20 ever, the West Indies failing to chase a target of 106, which like all worst things, has its charms.

Smog:

Let’s all hope, for the sake of cricket worldwide, that New Zealand wins the super over of the Battle of the Johns.